


All That Glitters

by LittleLynn



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Flint is an angry ginger, Humor, John Silver is a Little Shit, M/M, MobBoss!Flint, WhiteCollar!Silver, biding his time until he can escape, flint's hair lives au, max runs an underground network of intelligence, silver is dodging prison by helping MI5 catch criminals, until some genius decides to send him in after flint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 05:33:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8150893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLynn/pseuds/LittleLynn
Summary: Silver had felt decidedly clever when he had dodged a hefty prison sentence by convincing MI5 that; if he could infiltrate and systematically steal from any corporation he was faced with, then who’s to say he couldn’t infiltrate criminal organisations too?
But now they were sending him in after Flint and Silver really did not fancy being the latest body to wash up on the banks of the Thames.
Silver wasn’t planning on being in Flint’s organisation for more than a week before he found a way to get the fuck out of England, and honestly, how much trouble could he get himself into in a week?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yay an au! A white collar/mob boss au, but also (and far more importantly) an au where Flint keeps his adorbs lil ginger pony tail.
> 
> Big thank you to Kat who is beta'ing this fic too, it's all planned out, though lord only knows how many chapters it will end up being. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! <3

 

“I’m sorry, I think I must have heard you incorrectly.” Silver only just retained enough composure to keep his words steady and measured, when what he’d really wanted to do is splutter out in shock and shout ‘fuck no!’.

“We both know you did not,” Agent Rogers answered in a infuriatingly calm voice, the kind that could only be used by someone who held all of the cards and knew it.

Silver was starting to think he’d made a tactical error in recent decisions given that they had led him here.   

“Well I’m not doing it! There’s no way. You’re going to have to find some other sucker for this particular suicide mission.” Silver’s voice may have gotten a little shrill in his adamance.

“Fine. Then I hope you like orange, I hear that’s what they’re wearing in prison these days,” Rogers replied, the bastard not even bothering to look up from whatever it was he was writing.  

“Now wait just a minute.” Silver shifted in his chair, not used to being on the back foot in any conversation. Hell, he hadn’t even been on the back foot when he’d been _arrested_. “I am still more than happy to catch you and this delightful establishment the criminals you’re after. I’ve never turned down a mark, I’ve never failed to bring one in for you, you need me. But you can’t exactly blame me for refusing this one, that’s not me being difficult, that’s just me not wanting to get shot – _or worse_.”

“We do not need you, Mr Silver. We never needed you, I never even wanted you here. Your ability to convince my superiors that you would be useful was a clever trick, but I for one think it’s time you finally served time for the millions you embezzled. Don’t you?” Rogers continued in that bored tone, it was completely put on of course, but it rankled Silver all the same.

“Not really,” Silver grumbled. “You can’t send me to prison, far too many of the men in there want me dead – for doing you a favour I might add.”

“You weren’t doing anyone but yourself a favour. You were just attempting to keep yourself from going to prison,” Rogers countered and yes of course, but he’d been doing such a good job of it. “You’ll be given various protections, a different name and such.”

“Oh and what a lot of good that will do, they know what I look like! Probably have it vividly stamped into their brains, they probably draw artless pictures of me and throw darts at my head!” Silver was getting mildly hysterical, but honestly in his opinion he was holding it together rather well considering the circumstances.

Rogers was just ignoring him now, letting Silver stew in his impossible decision: go to prison and probably get shanked within a week or let MIfucking5 send him in after James fucking Flint where he would probably be shot within a week. Or _worse!_

Only someone clinically insane would risk going into Flint’s organisation undercover. If Flint – or any one of his goons – found out he was working for MI5 he would be lucky to get away with just being shot. In fact that would probably be a blessing. From what he knew about Flint, Silver imagined that any government agent lurking in his organisation would be flayed alive for secrets before being dumped in the river.

Sliver really did not fancy being the latest body to wash up on the banks of the Thames.

But he really, _really_ did not want to go to prison. Let alone a prison that he’d be lucky to walk out of. The whole point of him making this deal with MI5 had been so that he could bide his time until a golden opportunity to escape presented itself to him. Something which he had had no such luck with so far because of that pedantic arse Rogers was always making sure he was riddled with tracers and had to check in every twelve hours when on a mission lest he try to make a run for it.

He had thought himself so very clever when he’d made this deal with MI5. He’d embezzled millions out of a number of companies in a very short space of time, something he was quite proud of, even if he hadn’t been able to keep any of it (that they knew of, there was always at least one account they hadn’t found, not that he dared access it until he was free of his shackles). They had only caught him because of some disgustingly good luck for them and horrifyingly bad luck for Silver. But still, Silver had had no plans to go to prison, thank you very much.

Even as Rogers had gleefully shoved him into the chair and handcuffed him to the table in the interrogation room, it hadn’t been difficult to convince his superiors what an asset he could be. Honestly everyone could use a man of his talents. He’d made lying into not only a livelihood, but also an art form. He convinced the big wigs at MI5 that if he could infiltrate and systematically steal from any corporation he was faced with, then who’s to say he couldn’t infiltrate other organisations too? He was a hard man not to like, and once people liked you, the trust followed soon after, no matter how stupid they were to give it.

Silver promised them that with him they could bring down criminals they’d been after for years, and better yet, they wouldn’t have to risk an actual agent, and if Silver got caught who cares? He didn’t have any government secrets to spill.

Silver could still remember Rogers’ protests at his big arrest talking his way out of prison effortlessly. Quite annoyingly though, they’d made Rogers his handler, and he wanted nothing more than to see Silver’s ass in prison. He’d managed to gain the trust (! Really people were so stupid) of most of the others he had contact with at MI5, who for some reason decided to believe that yes! actually Silver did just love working for MI5 and bringing down criminals in the name of justice!

As if.

In reality, of course, Silver was just waiting for the opportune moment to disappear.

It was just his luck that the only one not taken in by his little act of docile – even happy – cooperation was the one person he needed to let his guard down. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Rogers was never going to let up on Silver, if only because he was still pissy that Silver had managed to ruin his big arrest but semi-freeing himself.

Rogers had made damn sure he’d not managed to completely free himself.

Still, he’d thought he would just have to play a waiting game, that eventually he would be sent after a mark that would provide the occasion to make a swift getaway.

No such luck.

But maybe going after Flint...

Silver was struck with the temptation that Flint might be just the mark he needed to get away.

“Let’s suspend reality for a moment and say I agree to this insane idea,” Siler started, and that got Rogers’ attention, clearly he hadn’t been expecting Silver to actually even consider it. “What sort of precautions would be taken?”

“Well, I – we haven’t discussed it yet.” Rogers cleared his throat and tried not to look like an unprepared idiot.

Rogers looked pretty disgruntled that he still wasn’t getting to send Silver to prison. It was the only thing about this mess that managed to make him the least bit smug.  

“Right, well call down your far more acquiescent superiors and let’s get on with this,” Silver told him, ready to take advantage of Rogers’ unpreparedness for Silver’s response, he was lucky that Rogers did have little choice but to call for his superiors, they were far more malleable than Rogers himself.

A few minutes later had various men in suits entering the room, they all looked so similar, Silver never could quite remember their names, especially as Rogers liked to keep him away from them as much as possible.

“What’s all this about then Silver?” One of them asked – Williams? Wickham? Walker? something like that – Silver tried not to smirk at the annoyed expression on Roger’s face as they addressed Silver instead of him.

“I will agree to go in after Flint,” Silver started, receiving a chortles and ‘we told you so Rogers’ and even one ‘we knew we could count on you’ of all things. “But I have a few stipulations.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, obviously Flint is a far more dangerous mark than I have helped you incarcerate before and as such I need to know that my safety is being thought about,” Silver explained, all politeness and obliging smiles.      

“Ah yes of course. We’ve been thinking about this ourselves. Now, due to the nature of Flint’s organisation, and our rather pressing need to catch him, you will be sent in far deeper cover than you have before.” Cartwright? Conners? Silver wasn’t sure, the white haired one anyway, started.

“Meaning?” Silver pressed for clarification, hoping they were about to tell him precisely what he wanted to hear.

“Meaning you’re going to have to make do with less check-ups, less meetings with his handler, _no_ tracers. In fact, any contact with your handler is probably going to have to be remote,” Williams explained and Silver tamped down hard on the victorious smile that tried to spread across his face while Rogers started spluttering out objections.

“Now wait just a moment! As helpful as Mr Silver has been in the past you shouldn’t forget how he got here,” Rogers protested, looking as if calling Silver helpful left a sour taste in his mouth, Silver pretended to be offended by his words.

“Come now Rogers, we haven’t forgotten, but you mustn’t overlook the success Silver has had where our other agents – yourself included I might add – have failed,” Conners said and Silver suppressed another smirk at Rogers’ indignant expression.   

“But still, to send him in with no tracer and without any regular check-ups in person is ludicrous,” Rogers continued and Silver couldn’t help but agree, how stupid some people were.

“If Flint found them Silver would be dead if he was lucky. No, we can’t risk it, we need to stop Flint and his reign of terror, and Silver here is the best choice for the job.”

“He’ll run!” Rogers seemed to just manage to stop himself from yelling it, clearly staggered that the other three hadn’t realised this.

“Really Rogers what am I going to have to do to earn your trust? I’ve risked my neck here to help you catch criminals more times than I can count,” Silver asked, voice pitched somewhere perfectly between jovial and hurt. It worked a treat on Rogers’ idiot superiors.

Honestly of course he was going to run.

The afternoon became hectic following the meeting in Rogers’ office, apparently they intended for Silver to start before the week was up, which was easier said than done. But Silver had such a track record of success that everyone was quite abuzz with the idea of the notorious Flint finally being felled.

Not bloody likely.

First opportunity Silver got he was going to be _gone_. No way was he going to follow through with this madness, the chances of him surviving it were far too small for his tastes, he’d rather risk incarceration again thank you very much.

During the briefing – which wasn’t at all very brief if you asked Silver, given that it lasted no less than six hours – he spent most of the time musing about where he would like to disappear to when he finally waved this place goodbye. Maybe he’d be terribly cliché and vanish to the Caribbean for a while. Perhaps he’d move on from embezzlement and try his hand at becoming an art thief, that seemed so much more glamourous anyway.

In-between his thoughts he answered questions on procedure and what to do if A B or C happened, to which Silver always thought ‘who cares, I’ll be long gone by then’ but answered correctly each time anyway. They insisted on him being trained in as much self-defence as possible in the few days before he would be officially deployed, and Silver wanted to scoff because three days’ worth of ‘unhand-me-sir!’ style defence was really not going to help him in the face of a man like Flint, even if Silver was any good at it.

He wasn’t, he was awful at fighting. Good at running though, he’d always been quick, it had saved him more times than he cared to count as a boy.

Still, there was a reason Silver chose the kind of crime that rarely lead to fist fights with madmen. That and how easy it was to get a grotesque amount of money out of rich bastards before they even realised it was gone.

“How much do you know about Flint?” One of the analysts carrying out the not at all brief briefing asked him.

“The same as everyone else does. Notorious mob boss, appeared seemingly out of nowhere almost ten years ago, has been terrorising the streets ever since. Makes the other London gangs look like child’s play.” Silver had made a point of avoiding him like the damn plague when he had been conducting his own crimes.

“In short, yes you are correct. But what is most dangerous about Flint is that he has the first organised mob we have seen in this country in a long time. Even the other gangs seem to listen to him for the most part. Infighting amidst the gangs used to mean they kept themselves relatively under control, now people still rise up against Flint but they are always stamped out ruthlessly and quickly. There is no prolonged gang war, the only people Flint seems interested in having a war against is _us_. And possibly most threatening thing at all, certainly to your mission, is that Flint is intelligent,” The analyst reeled off. Silver tried not to think about the fact that he was going to have to be in this man’s orbit at all, even if it was only going to be for a short time before he made a run for it.

“Anyone know why he has it in for the government so much?” Silver asked idly, it would be best if Silver could at least pretend to share his grievance, hell, he probably _did_ share them, just tended to go about sticking his middle finger at the government in a way that was less hazardous to his health.  

“Just the usual rubbish.” The analyst waved him off and Silver knew instantly that he was lying. He made such an art of lying that he always knew when someone else was doing it, especially when they weren’t even doing it well.

Interesting that there was some reason Flint hated them so much, even more so that they knew it and did not wish to share that information.

Silver pushed the curiosity away, he had no intention of chasing that particular rabbit as it would probably lead him far closer to Flint than he ever intended to get.

“I don’t suppose I’ll be getting hazard pay?” Silver wondered aloud idly, everyone seemed to think he was making a funny joke, Silver hadn’t really been kidding.

The analyst continued, telling him things about Flint and his organisation that Silver deliberately forgot straight away – it would look immensely suspicious if Silver went in with too much information, honestly.

A while later they started going over the cover they had thought up for him, but Silver immediately rejected it.

“No, forget all that, you can’t plan that for this kind of mark,” Silver had interrupted, actually paying attention to this part of the briefing.

“Excuse me?” The young woman explaining looked annoyed at being stop mid-sentence.

“You can’t plant me in his organisation, it’s too suspicious. Which means you can’t come up with a set cover story for me either. I’m going to have to find my own way in which means I’m going to have to come up with my own story as I go, depending on what bullshit I peddled to get myself in in the first place. I know you people like your fake passports and elaborate backstories, but that’s not going to work here,” Silver explained, finding it immensely worrying that these people were supposed to be the experts. Then again, given that he was a criminal it was probably good for him that they were mildly incompetent.

Eventually, after far too long and having to endure a very long threatening lecture from Rogers about what would happen to him if he tried to escape (which they both knew he was paying no attention to anyway) Silver was released to go home for the day.

The moment he stepped into his apartment – rather run down, Rogers had chosen it – Silver let the smug smile he’d been holding in all day finally spread across his face.

Patience was a virtue and one of the few Silver could claim as his own.

He made himself a cup of tea and settled down on his sofa, propping his legs on his coffee table and for once not caring about the tracker around his ankle when it peaked out from under his trousers. In a few days, the idiots at MI5 were going to take it, and all of their other precautions, off of him.

Rogers had even been given a warning about keeping too close an eye on him, lest he blow Silver’s cover himself. There were few things Silver enjoyed seeing more than Rogers being reprimanded for being the only sensible one in the room. It served as a reminder that apparently Silver still had it – it being an uncanny ability to wrap people around his little finger.

Not that he was going to even try it with Flint. No bloody way. He didn’t intend to be anywhere near that madman long enough for him to need to make Flint like him. Did men like Flint like _anybody_?

Silver was hoping he wouldn’t have to be in Flint’s organisation for more than a week before he found a way to get the fuck out of England, and honestly, how much trouble could he get himself into in a week?

 

**Author's Note:**

> (A lot Silver, the answer is a lot) :')
> 
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the start, comments and kudos make me a happy and motivated lil bean <3
> 
> [tumblr](http://shadyanne.tumblr.com/) \- feel free to come for a chat!


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